When we gave the two littlest members of our bridal party their gifts the reaction was about the same for both. My neice looked at the silly stuffed purple dragon (NOT Barney!) and was decidely unimpressed, although she later discovered that the dragon's ears and horns made marvelous things to hold onto when the dragon needed to be dragged from room to room. My nephew opened his box and exclaimed "It's just a dragon!", which was about the reaction I was expecting, even though I was quickly reassured that 'just' was a fairly new and well-liked word these days.

So it was with great amusment when I heard today that my nephew's dragon has taken on a much larger role than any of us anticipated. It seems that Bil-1 came downstairs a bit earlier than usual last night after trying to put my nephew to bed, noting that it appeared he was no longer needed. Apparently little Aaron calmly told his father that he didn't need to stay there with him because the dragon would take care of him. The dragon (whose name, I gather, is Dante) and Aaron hold lively conversations together, and he'll do what the dragon tells him to do (such as 'you should eat another bite of dinner, Aaron!' 'Okay dragon!'). And it's not one of his parents 'talking' for the dragon - no, this is Aaron who does both sides of the conversations.

I apologized, between giggles, for inadvertantly giving my nephew a toy that has usurped some of their parental privileges. My older sister assured me (laughing herself) that actually they were relieved, and so the arrival of the 'talking' dragon was a good thing after all.